


Love Is Not a Victory March

by pajamaprodigy



Category: Robotica Robotics
Genre: Angst, Artistic License, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Robot Feels, Spoilers, Suicide, heavy robogore, robot gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pajamaprodigy/pseuds/pajamaprodigy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Natsu stands in front of a train, Masa tries to learn more about the robots, with the twin goals of reviving Natsu and helping both boys recover from their past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, idk how long this is gonna be, but Robotica*Robotics was an amazing short but after debating all day online about whether or not Natsu can be revived and why he wanted to kill himself, I decided to put my answers into fic form.
> 
> The reason I chose not to use archive warnings was out of a desire to avoid specific spoilers, so consider this a more general warning for the content of this fic.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, where did those two go? Masa thought to himself. Shit. It had been some months since he had found the robot boys, Haru and Natsu, sitting on an old couch by the side of the side of the road, but they were still mysterious to him in many ways. The fact that his specialty as an engineer was much more on the mechanical end than the electrical or computer end certainly didn’t help. Anyway, the coffee on the sofa was still warm; they couldn’t have gotten that far, right? He sighed and headed out, still wearing his bathrobe and sweatpants.

From the moment he saw the two robots, he knew something was wrong. Natsu’s head was far below Haru’s. Haru walked slowly, as if burdened by – oh god he was carrying Natsu? Natsu was somehow – longer than he had been before? And Haru was staring up?

Masa broke into a run.

“Fools,” he exclaimed softly, dropping to his knees to embrace the boys. Or what was left of them. Haru was whole. He was weeping—who knew robots could weep—but at least he was standing. And carrying under one arm Natsu’s crushed trunk, while his oddly and unevenly extended legs dragged behind. In his other hand was an arm, not attached to any body, from which dripped not blood but brightly colored wires. One arm around Haru and one around Natsu, pulled them close and pushed his head where Haru couldn’t see. He couldn’t be caught crying. “Foolish kids.” Haru didn’t press his face into Masa, the way a human boy might have. He didn’t resist either, when Masa pulled Natsu’s limp and unresponsive body away. He would carry…this…from now on. “Let’s go home.”

Haru walked behind Masa, holding his hand, and, with his other, holding Natsu’s disconnected left arm. Masa wouldn’t take that from him. Not if Haru wanted to hold it. Walking in front of Haru, Masa was free to cry, which he did, silently. He didn’t want to open his mouth. He was afraid of what he might say.  
“Masa, it’s warm,” said Haru softly.  
It was warm. A beautiful, bright, warm summer day. Summer. Natsu. Masa’s tears fell hot and fast onto Natsu’s face, which, other than a pair of melted grooves on the left side, looked almost no different than it had before. There must be something I can do, Masa thought. Natsu wasn’t human. There might still be a chance. 

Masa had to let go of Haru’s hand when he reached the bungalow. He and Haru climbed the stairs beside each other; Haru could have looked up to see Masa crying but instead the robot boy focused his gaze on Natsu’s immobile face.  
Before opening the door, Masa put his free arm around Haru again. “You two are my own two children.” Speaking to both of them, as if Natsu could hear him. You two are. Two of them. Are. Not were. Not one. 

After brewing some black tea (with plenty of honey) for Haru, Masa retired, carrying …This…, to his study. He lay the pieces of Natsu’s form out on the floor and surveyed the damage. He felt something rising in his throat.

Legs: the plastic coating broken in several places, and a few of the wires broken as well; most of the wires seemed to have been uncoiled from each other, spanning several inches between the remaining chunks of plastic. His left leg was in much worse shape than the right. The pattern of more severe left side damage seemed consistent.  
Torso: crushed in. The ends of several broken wires peaking out through the shattered plastic, some of which had melted on the left side. A few metal pieces of what Masa recognized as a motherboard were also scattered about. He wondered if any had been lost outside. There was some kind of black substance smeared about too, but it was unclear whether this came from within Natsu or whatever had caused his injury. Masa didn’t quite know how to ask Haru what had happened.  
Arms: right still attached, with damage to the hand: wires poking out, plastic shattered, melted, and caved in, etc. The left had been severed above the elbow but the detached parts seemed mostly undamaged. Haru had been holding that hand.  
Head: melted grooves running from the chin to the left cheek and from the left cheek up just beside the eye. The right side of the face appeared to be fine. 

No. Masa swallowed heavily, despite the horrible burning feeling. No matter how bad …This… looked, he could fix it. He knew about putting machinery together, and he had been studying robotics.  
Masa almost fell on his face as he tripped over a stack of recently purchased programming books. Grabbing a notebook and badly bitten pencil, he set to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For people who don't know, "Natsu" means "summer" in Japanese. This is why Masa thinks this to himself: "A beautiful, bright, warm summer day. Summer. Natsu."


	2. Chapter 2

Haru tasted the black tea. It didn’t really have anywhere to go inside of him, so he couldn’t swallow it, but he could taste the middling pH and feel the warmth of the brown liquid, and so he did what he often did: enjoyed his tea until it got cold.   
He kept tasting it long after it became cold. Thoughts were swirling inside of him, but he had no one to talk to, no one who would return his words with neat phrases or narrative. Loneliness was nothing new: Natsu was often busy reading or sitting in their room alone, and Masa was always studying. There was something different about this loneliness.   
Haru straddled his chair and leaned over the table.

Masa stumbled out of his study some time later, clenching his fringe in his fist. “Is there any coffee left?” he muttered, wandering into the kitchen.  
“Yes there is, Masa,” said Haru, jumping up to help him. He was glad for the activity. Masa got a mug from the cupboard and poured himself a brimming cup. There was none of the steam that Haru was used to, but Masa gulped it down in barely a minute anyway.

“Haru, I’m sorry, but,” Masa put down his almost empty cup, “what happened?”  
Haru stopped. “Natsu, Natsu and I were walking together. I think this is love. When we came to the train crossing, he said that love, love wasn’t something he could have. We had disagreed. The train was coming, and I held Natsu’s hand.” There. He awaited the response.   
Masa picked up his cup and abruptly put it down again. “Natsu got himself run over by a train?”  
“Yes!” Haru had been understood.   
Masa sighed. “Where the hell did he get that idea from?” he muttered. “Haru, I’m sorry, but I promise I’m going to do my best to fix Natsu. He’ll be alright, Haru.”  
“Humans commit suicide; can robots commit suicide too?” asked Haru.  
“No,” said Masa. “Don’t even think about it.”  
“Yes,” said Haru. “That’s what Natsu did.”  
“What Natsu tried to do. He’s a robot. Robots can be repaired, and that’s what I’m gonna do. Natsu’s going to be fine. You two will be fine.”  
“Natsu reads all the time. He wanted to commit suicide. He probably read how in a book. He said he wanted to die sometimes at night,” said Haru.   
“Well, he can’t die,” said Masa, raising his voice slightly. “And goddammit whatever book he got the idea from is going into my study.”  
“He’s in your study now. The things he says are scary. He can go in to read. He likes to read, but he’s different at night. We cannot sleep, so we think and talk, and he talks about committing suicide. He reads during the day.” Natsu had loved to read; Haru didn’t want his books to be taken away.   
“So I should just let my kid read about how to kill himself then,” sighed Masa.  
“He loves to read,” said Haru. “He says strange things when you’re asleep and it’s night.”  
Masa turned away. “You kids…” He shook slightly and poured himself another cup of coffee. “After he’s better, he can read whatever he wants.”  
“Yes, thank you,” said Haru, glad that Natsu would not be forbidden from reading when he came, all better, out of the study.  
“Is it lonely?” Masa asked suddenly.  
“What?”  
“Being a robot?”  
Haru squeezed shut his eyes. Gesture for difficult. “Not for me, when Natsu is here.”  
“Natsu will be back in no time,” said Masa. He walked back towards his study again but stopped in front of Haru. He smiled, reached out and ruffled Haru’s hair. Then, he continued on to his study, shutting the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to write Haru's dialogue in line with what he says in the short, in that he can compose sentences, but that his putting those sentences together into narratives comes out kinda jumbled.


	3. Chapter 3

It pained Masa to take apart what remained of Natsu’s body even further, but he did so anyway, carefully the tiny bolts that had held his now crushed chest together, opening the seam hidden under his long, black hyper-realistic hair. Whoever had made the boys had clearly put a lot of effort into trying to make them look human, but the results, well, even though Masa loved them, he was still sometimes deeply unsettled by their dry, pocket-like mouths, the lack of grooves on their fingertips, and the perfect uniformity of every strand of their hair. Pulling out tiny light brown screws, made exactly of the same material as Natsu’s skin, was worse than all those attributes combined, but Masa forced himself to do it.  
While telling himself that this was the only way to fix Natsu made Masa feel a bit better in the moment, his head started spinning when he looked back down at the body, more mangled than before. However, he could at least see the basics of how it worked. The head contained primarily tiny gears, which he assumed were responsible for the remarkably minute facial movements Haru and Natsu were capable of. The torso, however, seemed to contain the “brain” of the robot: a moderately damaged motherboard, attached to several other boards, some of which were intact and some of which had been badly crushed. Most of the wires too were broken. This would be the hardest, but the most important part to fix.  
The plan Masa had formulated for how he would go about fixing the boards where Natsu’s programming was kept was far from foolproof. He would simply attach the boards to a monitor so that he could access the code that remained. From there he would find out not only the basics of the programs used for Natsu but which elements were intact, and which were gone. Gone. Gone. No. He was going to buy replacement parts, reattach them to the fixed boards, and, using the remaining code, unite them with the rest of Natsu’s programming.  
Reaching into Natsu’s torso, Masa felt as if he should be wearing latex gloves.

“Haru?” Masa called when he next left the study, around three in the afternoon. He was finally too hungry to continue working, and he needed to check in on Haru anyway.  
“Yes!” called Haru, and Masa heard him running forward from the back room he and Natsu shared.  
“Haru, I’m going to make myself a snack. Do you want to sit with me?”  
“Yes, how is Natsu?” Haru asked, leaning forward.  
“I’m still looking over his codes, and I’m probably going to need a lot of new parts, but he’s coming right along,” sighed Masa, picking up a carrot and a paring knife.  
“I’m Haru. Natsu and Haru are robots. We were made by a professor. She had rooms and rooms of parts.”  
“Rooms and rooms of parts, huh?” Masa peeled the carrot. “And do you think she’d know anything about how to fix Natsu? Do you have any way to contact her?” Of course they had been made by somebody, but having found two robots sitting amongst discarded furniture had led him to assume that whoever had made them was no longer involved with the boys in any capacity. Worth a shot, though.  
“Rooms and rooms of parts, Natsu and I think about her lots. Natsu wanted to commit suicide; he said you didn’t want us either,” Haru said, looking upwards as he leaned against the wall.  
Oh god. “Of course I want you two. I love you. You’re my two children.” Masa felt blood rushing to his face. Natsu… it wasn’t just some kind of existential dilemma about love and robotics. Someone, the person who created him, had told him that “love was something he couldn’t have.” And to ask that someone for parts… Masa was furious.  
“Am I going to ask her for parts?” asked Haru. He was staring intently at Masa now, his arms folded up around his shoulders. His voice and expression were merely curious.  
“I’m sure I can get them somewhere else,” said Masa, biting hard into the carrot. “You don’t need to talk to her.”  
“She had rooms and rooms of parts. I don’t know if she knows how to fix Natsu. To help her to make robots. I didn’t help her. She made many, many robots. Prolific. She made robots to help her to make robots to help her to make robots to help her to make robots. Natsu didn’t help her. She didn’t love us.” Haru lowered his arms but continued staring at Masa.  
“So you mean she might not even have been the one who made you? Because she made robots to do the actual work for her?”  
“She wanted to make the best robot in the world. Robots who can learn and love. There are two kinds of robots, according to humans. The professor made robots who could make more robots. She wanted a robot who can learn. The first kind of robot can love,” Haru continued.  
“The kind Natsu thought he wasn’t.”  
“She made lots and lots of robots. Natsu talked like her, and so she talked to him. We lived with her for a year. She told Natsu lots of things. She gave me a notebook, and gave me a room for drawing.”  
“Was Natsu with you?” Masa asked. He had only rarely spoken with Haru without Natsu there. Frankly, Masa found the robot boy somewhat difficult to understand without Natsu’s more coherent, if occasionally harsh, introjections.  
“We always spent mornings together. He went all over the house and could go outside, and we sat together with her when she ate. He said she talked about robots. I only tried coffee when we came to live with you. Natsu studied during the daytime and talked to the professor at night. In the morning, Natsu told me about the professor.”  
Oh. No wonder then, that Haru’s speech was so unlike Natsu’s. Haru had barely spoken to humans, while Natsu had had time to read, and had frequent conversations with the professor. The professor and Natsu had been Haru’s whole world, and she had abandoned them.  
“Did you like the professor?” asked Masa. God he was starving.  
Haru squeezed shut his eyes and hummed. He always did that when he didn’t know the answer to something. Masa opened the refrigerator and pulled out a tub of leftover rice.  
“You don’t need to answer me if you don’t want. I can get the parts elsewhere.”  
Haru opened his eyes again. “Ok. I’ll help though.”  
“Thanks.”

“Oh! One more thing,” Masa stopped at the door of his study. “I have plenty of notebooks and pencils and stuff in here. If you ever want to draw or anything, let me know and I can bring them out.”  
Haru closed his eyes and hummed, and Masa waited, the door ajar, for an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here you go, angsty chapter 1.0 you can (not) have a happy backstory.


	4. Chapter 4

Somehow, life in Masa’s home developed a routine again. He had had a routine before he found the boys, and then, for a few months, another routine in which they lived with him. They had lived with him and read his books and taken cups of his tea and coffee and snuck into his study and laughed at and with him and he had snarked back at them and he had loved them. And then there was a new routine, the one he had now. 

He hated leaving Haru alone, but he also hated leaving Natsu’s body, so Masa began to leave his study door half open. Haru was often occupied by his drawings. Most of them seemed to be of Natsu and himself. Masa had found Haru a few times drawing in front of the bathroom mirror or studying the single photograph that existed of the three of them. While Haru had seemed nervous about it at first, as the weeks went on, he started to feel eager to show his drawings to Masa at mealtimes. 

By the end of August, Masa knew what parts he would need to order to replace what had been broken. It was a relief to no longer have to look through Natsu’s code. Even besides his own relative lack of confidence in his programming knowledge, looking through the code frightened him. This was what Natsu himself was made of, and all the empty and garbled places were holes in Natsu, much, much more deadly than melted and shattered plastic and torn wires. It was here that any failure would ruin all three of them.

Haru offered to walk with Masa to the post office to place orders for replacement parts. He was excited to walk again through the sunflowers, under the warm September sun, with Masa. He had recently started to draw without lifting up his pencil, distinguishing forms by the thickness and closeness of lines. “If you want, we can go look for new pencils and paper for you,” suggested Masa, when Haru told him that he wanted to go. “Would you like colored pencils?”  
Haru thought. “I’ll see what colors,” he eventually answered. 

Of course people stared at them. Masa was wearing a shirt he had slept in for five hours, the only sleep he had gotten in two days, and hadn’t washed his hair or shaved. His hands were covered in grime from his efforts to repair Natsu’s body, and his breath stank of coffee. Then there was Haru. While he might be mistaken for a human at a distance, he was very clearly a robot, and a strangely lively robot at that. 

After the post office, Masa watched from a distance as Haru examined every pencil in the array. Not every color of pencil, but every individual pencil. Half dozing, he stood amazed at how much his life had changed over the course of the past few months. He was a solitary man, moving on quickly after graduating university, transplanting himself to the countryside to study, and not expecting to ever have a family again. He had believed that only four months ago. He thought about the projects that he had put on hold while repairing Natsu, and how long it had been since Haru had started on the greens and sighed. He wasn’t happy. Of course he wasn’t. Back in his study, Natsu was still an unresponsive heap of wires and damaged parts. His son had not shown any signs of consciousness in over a month, after a suicide attempt. Masa was struggling against his own uncertainty and grief to save him and help his other son recover from what Natsu had done and whatever the hell kind of life he had had with the “professor.” Of course he wasn’t happy. 

Still, watching Haru staring intently at the tip of a magenta pencil in the deepening afternoon, Masa smiled. Maybe it was hope. Or maybe love was enough.

In the end, Haru only picked out three pencils. Red, like Masa’s hair when the light shone directly through it; orange like sunflowers; and dark blue, like the night, when he and Natsu were alone together. Walking home with Masa, he explained to him that he intended to use each color for an independent type of subject: indoors, outdoors, Natsu. However, in the weeks that followed, Haru found himself mixing the colors and their correspondents. 

“Is it important for a robot to draw?” Haru asked Masa one night, after dinner.   
“Hmm, I guess that depends. Is it important to you that you’re drawing?” asked Masa.  
“Yes. It’s important to me. I want to show Natsu, and I want to show you, but only you two!” answered Haru. Haru then closed his eyes; that answer should have been harder.   
Masa laughed, but his face was serious when he answered. “Of course it’s important, then. If it’s important for you, then it’s important. And I can’t wait until we can show Natsu.”

During the wait, Masa worked at repairing the body. This was his area of expertise. This was something he could do with confidence. Of course it was hard. Of course Masa wasn’t happy. Masa was, however, hopeful. He knew what he was doing to repair Natsu, and he was damn good at it. The changes were visible and recognizable. The body on the table in his workroom was no longer a wreckage of broken wires and plastic, but, if lifeless, whole excepting the central boards. 

The computer parts arrived before the first of October, and Masa began again to program.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be the last one.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long to post. Personal shit happened and I didn't want to interact with this story for a while. Hope this chapter isn't a drop in quality of writing t least.

Autumn was nearly over by the time Masa’s work was finished. Inserting the boards back into the body, he did alone, before dawn, but he would ask Haru if he wanted to be there later.

For breakfast, Masa had coffee and Haru played with a cup of hot water. 

“I want to see Natsu soon,” was Haru’s answer.

The power buttons on the boys were, to Masa’s fury, located between their shoulders, in a place their arms could not reach. Further more, there seemed to be some kind of temperature sensor on them; the button on Natsu’s back would not move when he attempted to push it with a pencil. How much easier it could have all been, he thought, if Natsu could have simply turned himself off or asked Haru to do it for him. If Haru, during those long lonely days in the professor’s house, could at least have approximated sleep. It made Masa furious, so he did his best not to think about it.

Just sit Natu’s body up on the table. Just push the power button, turn it on, and hope that he hadn’t forgotten anything. Haru’s head was tilted but his eyes were open. Masa tried to drain his cup of coffee, but it was fuller than he’d assumed. He set it down by his feet. Just push the power button. 

Nothing was wrong with the power button. A soft buzz, and Haru jumped forward, and took one of the hands. “Natsu’s cold right now,” he said, staring at Masa.   
“He’s been away for a while. He might take a while to warm up.” Please, thought Masa, let this be all.

And warmth crept back into the hand that Haru held, much more gingerly, much more softly than he had on that summer day. And in the coldest room in Masa’s house, at the end of autumn, that warmth seemed a confirmation of his hope, hope that they could go back to a time before Natsu had stood in the path of the train. 

And then he sat up silently, looking around at Masa and Haru. “The activation is complete. I await your orders.”

And all of Haru’s hopes crashed down. 

Perhaps it was Haru tilting back his head and trembling that told Masa what was wrong, or perhaps he knew, just by listening, that it couldn’t be that Natsu was playing some kind of prank. The robot sitting up, slowly moving his head back and forth, on the table was someone new. Masa had built a robot. It was quite a feat. He sighed and knocked over the coffee cup on the floor in front of him. The now-cold liquid spilled over his feet as he began to pace.

“It’s alright, Haru!” Masa nearly shouted. The shouting would have frightened Natsu, reminded him of overturned tables and spilled stacks of books and worthlessness and long nights alone with the professor, but the new robot was completely unfazed. “I’ll keep working! I’ll fix him! I’ll bring him back!”

Quietly the new robot stepped down from the table. Silently, he grabbed up a rag from one of Masa’s shelves and lay it over the puddle of cold coffee. He stared up at Masa with blankly frightened black eyes.

Haru walked to his side. “You don’t have to do that right now. Sometimes he forgets about his cups, and sometimes he stays in here all day.”

The new robot stopped and looked at Haru. “What should I do?”

“It’s lonely here sometimes, when Masa is inside of his study all day.”

He was quiet again. 

“Haru, you won’t be lonely soon! I can bring him back! I’ll keep working!”

“What’s his name?” Haru asked.

“This robot’s…” Masa looked at the figure holding the coffee-sodden towel. He had Natsu’s body, but instead of Natsu’s wry smile, his face was frozen in stoic fear and instead of Natsu’s oddly raised shoulders and crossed arms, his hands hung heavily at his sides. “name?”

“None, for now,” he answered quietly.

“You shouldn’t hurt him. Natsu is gone, and I won’t be lonely.” Haru felt the sobs rising again, and he couldn’t stop them. 

Giving up? Masa’s head was spinning, and all he could think about was Natsu, gone. Gone. He had failed he had failed he had failed and Natsu was gone Natsu was gone. Haru was weeping, hard as he had on that day, almost four months ago. Given up. Resigned.

“Masa cleans up his own study, because this place is his. I can show you our room if you want. It’s ours. Masa doesn’t usually let us touch things in here, but today is special.” Haru was shaking heavily as he extended his hand to the new robot. “Do you like the name “Aki”? My name is Haru and he was named Natsu.” 

“Yes,” answered the new robot. He reached out and touched Haru’s hand softly, then pulled back. It was too much, too fast, and he was so confused.

Natsu was gone, and Haru was weeping. Of course he was grieving, and of course that was why he was crying, but there was something else too. This new robot would never be Natsu. He would never have to remember terrible things every night when he couldn’t sleep. He would never believe that he was worthless or incapable of love. He would never have to want to die. 

Is that what Natsu would have wanted for himself? Could Natsu have wanted that for himself? It was what Haru wanted for Natsu, and so it was what Haru wanted for this new robot. And he would do his best, later, to be brave and strong and make a happy life for Aki, but for now, all Haru could do was cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry


End file.
